This is the most in-depth AdvertSuite review you’ll find anywhere online.
Are you considering to purchase access to the worlds largest database of Facebook ads?
Let me be clear, it’s a very helpful spy tool but there are a few things you should know before pulling the trigger. This article will make sure that you’ll know everything you need to know.
I’ve purchased AdvertSuite 1.0 when it first came out, and I’ve updated this review article to reflect the changes for the launch of AdvertSuite 2.0 in September of 2022.
Introduction
Ever since the launch of Facebook Ad Library, the transparency about which Facebook ads are running increased. Before that, us marketers had to rely on shady ad spy tools and Chrome extensions that automatically scrolled your Facebook timeline to scrape and save ads.
The Facebook Ad Library presented a new level of transparency for advertisers to see what ads others are running. And a new source for developers to build 3rd-party software around it!
Like Luke Maguire, the Australian founder of AdvertSuite, who had been quietly filling his database with Facebook ads for months. So at the point of his first product launch he had already saved over 40 million Facebook ads in a searchable / filterable database.
And he kept adding new ads ever since!
With the launch of AdvertSuite 2.0 it contains well over 80 million ads, across: Facebook, Instagram, Google and YouTube.
In this review I’m going to show you exactly how the AdvertSuite software works and how you can use it to see which ads are working for others. So you can model these winning ads in your own industry and increase your chances of success.
I’ll highlight the pros and cons, go over all the features, share the exact sales process including up-sells they present in their funnel and I’ll give various examples of how I’ve personally used AdvertSuite to get ideas and inspiration for ad campaigns.
You’ll learn:
- What AdvertSuite is and which problem it solves for its users.
- Which filters and sorting options you’ll have in AdvertSuite.
- How to use AdvertSuite to spy on other people’s winning ads.
- Which ‘trick’ to be aware of when you’re buying AdvertSuite.
Let’s dive right in to my AdvertSuite review.
How to read this article
If you’re just curious about AdvertSuite
- Feel free to skim the headlines and learn whatever you like.
If you’re not actively considering to purchase AdvertSuite
- You don’t need to know every little detail, just the general idea.
- Bookmark this article for later reference.
If you’re actively considering to purchase AdvertSuite
- Pay special attention to the section on features.
- Don’t miss the pricing section, because there are a few “secret” upsells.
What is AdvertSuite?
AdvertSuite is a database with tens of millions Facebook ads in it.
They also support ads displayed on the Instagram, YouTube and Google advertising platforms. But to access ads on these platforms you’ll need to buy an upgrade (I’ll get to these upsells later on). The core product supports exclusively Facebook ads, which is what I use it for mostly.
On their beautifully designed website they present AdvertSuite from the angle of being able to see what ads work for others – and how you won’t need to spend money on testing anymore because you can simply replicate succesfull ads in any niche.
That’s partially true… you can indeed see the ads other people are running.
But I don’t think that blindly replicating what others do is a sustainable business strategy. And next to that you still need to test your own product offers, ads, landing pages, etc.
I see this tool more like a research platform.
With AdvertSuite you can easily search and filter to look at other peoples ads for inspiration.
I get a ton of inspiration from looking at what others do, studying why it seems to work for them, and then modelling that in my own Facebook advertising campaigns.
Why reinvent the wheel when other already have found winners?
So, it’s a searchable and filterable database with millions of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Google ads that you can use for competitive research & inspiration.
Which problem does AdvertSuite solve?
Coming up with new Facebook ads can be hard 🤔
How do you come up with fresh ideas for new ad creative, ad copy and landing pages?
If you’re like me you’re keeping a folder of screenshots to save Facebook ads that show up in your timeline. It’s a personal swipe-folder of Facebook ads that captured my attention when I scrolled past them in my timeline.
I use that swipe-folder for ad inspiration whenever I need it.
AdvertSuite basically serves the same purpose, but at a much bigger scale and in a more usable format. It allows to search for ads from specific advertisers, containing specific keywords, linking to certain domains… and many more filters options.
So you’ll have a swipe-file, without the work and time it usually takes to build one.
While it’s (sadly) not possible to see how much was spent on the ads or how much revenue they generated, you can sort the ads by engagement (likes, comments, shares). The assumption is that ads with high engagement that were active for quite some time, must have been profitable.
Otherwise the advertiser would’ve killed them.
I realise that is a risky assumption – but I feel there is at least some truth in it.
AdvertSuite will give you ad inspiration when you need it, without putting in the work to maintain a swipe-file. It allows you to search for ads using a plethora of options and then sort these ads by engagement metrics. It offers a lot of search options and filters that are unavailable inside Facebook’s Ad Library.
I said plethora of options, so let’s go over all the features in detail in the next section of this AdvertSuite review article.
AdvertSuite features
On the AdvertSuite sales page it says there are currently more than 80 million Facebook ads in their database. From over 20 countries. And they keep adding new ads regularly.
First thing I noticed when I logged-in to the tool, looking for my own country, is that you can select any country in the world. I haven’t tested it for every country, but I’ve never selected a country for which the tool didn’t return ads.
So I’m quite sure that “from over 20 countries” is actually a lot more.
Another important thing to realise before I’ll discuss all the features, is that the tool contains both live and past ads. You do have date filters to search for ads that have been “created on” or “seen on” after a certain date.
These are all the filters and options to choose from:
I’ll go over each one of these options now to explain what they are and how they can be used to find the best Facebook ads that are relevant to your industry or product.
As you can see on the far left of my screenshot, I’m looking into Facebook ads.
Instagram, Google and YouTube aren’t part of the core product. To also get access to the ads served on these platforms, you’ll have to purchase the “syndication upgrade”.
I’ll show you the sales process, upgrades and pricing later on in this AdvertSuite review.
Search mode
AdvertSuite offers various search modes.
You can search based on keywords (in the ad copy, comments on the ad or in the landing page text), advertiser (a specific advertiser name or a keyword in the name) or domain (a specific domain name or a keyword in the domain name).
So you can for example:
- Search for ads for which the copy contains the keyword ‘crossfit’.
- Search for ads that link to a landing page which contains ‘crossfit’.
- Search for ads run by advertisers with ‘crossfit’ in their name.
- Search for ads specifically by advertiser ‘CrossFit Union Square’.
- Search for ads that land on a domain that contains the word ‘crossfit’.
Sort by
When you do a search, you’ll get a huge infinite scroll list of Facebook ads that match the search criteria. You’ll probably want to sort these ads first.
You can sort by: newest, running longest, likes, comments, shares and views.
I usually sort the ads likes or comments (these had the highest engagement). Or I look at “running longest” (if they’re running longest, it must be working for them right?)
Country & language
You can select ads that were displayed in a specific country by selecting it from the dropdown. As I mentioned in the beginning of this section, there are many more than 20 countries you can select. The same applies to languages.
You can basically select any country and language you like.
I rarely use the country filter without also specifying a language, because many FB advertisers will just display their English ads to a “worldwide” audience – they’re not local ads. When you combine the country filter with the language filter it makes more sense. I can for example look at Dutch ads that were shown in the Netherlands.
Date ranges
AdvertSuite offers two date range filters. One is to ad seen between and the other one is post date between. I think these are pretty self-explanatory. You probably don’t want to look at really old ads if you want to learn more about what’s working now.
Ad type, position and CTA
You can use the ad type filter to specifically select either image or video ads. And with the position filter you can look at ads that were displayed in the news feed or in the right-side column. I usually don’t set these filters, because I want to see all ads.
Lastly you can also filter ads by the CTA button text they used. For example, only ads that had a SHOP NOW or DONATE NOW button.
Gender and age
Here it gets really interesting. You have the option to filter ads by the audience they were targeted at (which gender and which age range). AdvertSuite gets this data by looking at the profiles of people who commented on the ads.
So for example: if there were 100 comments on the ad and they were all from men in the ages between 18 and 24, you’ll know almost for sure that’s the target audience.
You can also see this demographic breakdown for most of the ads you analyse, provided that they’ve had comments (because that’s the source of this information).
I’ll show you the ad analysis part later on, when I’ve showed you all the filters.
We’re almost there, but I saved the best for last…
Landing page software
AdvertSuite not only scrapes the ads itself and the comments on it, but also the landing page the ads link to. This allows you to search for keywords that appear on the landing page (as I mentioned in the search mode section).
But it also allows to filter ads based on the landing page tool / software they use.
You can select the popular funnel softwares ClickFunnels or LeadPages. Or you can choose to look ads that link to e-com platforms Shopify, WooCommerce or Magento.
This is one of the best features in my opinion.
For e-commerce sellers it’s super easy to filter ads that land on a Shopify store to quickly find best-selling products. I often look at ads that land on ClickFunnels pages and that have been running longest, to “funnel-hack” these for inspiration.
Special interests
The final filter in AdvertSuite allows to search for ads within specific areas. I’m not involved in any of these – but it you are it’s good to know the option is available.
Filters for Instagram, Google and YouTube ads
As I mentioned before, the core AdvertSuite product supports just Facebook ads. If you purchase their “syndication” upgrade you also get Instagram, Google and YouTube ads.
The filters for these ads are mostly similar as you can see in the screenshots below.
YouTube
Use AdvertSuite, to learn what works for others (and model that in your business)
In the previous section of this in-depth AdvertSuite review, I’ve showed you all the bells and whistles now when it comes to filters & sorting. I think by now you have a pretty good understanding of what AdvertSuite does and how you can use it to find ads that are relevant to your niche, product or audience.
When you find ads that you like you can save these to your favorites.
And you can click the question-mark to open them to analyse all the information about these ads, the audience they were targeted at, the landing page they send traffic to.
This is what it looks like:
So, let’s for the sake of this example assume that I own a Shopify store where I sell products in the dog niche. I stumbled upon this ad when I searched for ads that send their traffic to a Shopify store and have high engagement rates (18K likes).
It’s a Corgy dog pillow.
Would such a pillow also work for other dog breeds in my store? Probably…
Then I use AdvertSuite to learn:
- What ad copy worked well for them.
- What type of image they used to get high engagement.
- What their landing page looks like.
- That their ad has been running for 531 days (holy cow)
- That they probably targeted just Taiwan.
- What the targeted audience looked like (gender / ages).
Then I can even go to their landing page and learn from their sales copy, pricing, order process, everything. I could basically copy exactly everything they do and just target a different country to see if that would work. Even better, I could model what works for them and then apply it to my own specific industry, product and store.
AdvertSuite pricing
Now in the next part of my AdvertSuite review, let’s go over pricing, because there are a few things that you should be aware of when purchasing this software.
Nothing dramatic, but definitely good to know.
First of all, Luke Maguire the founder of AdvertSuite, is a great salesman. Everything looks polished, from the website itself to his shiny sales videos. I think a review like mine helps to see through the sales-y approach and learn what it actually does.
So here’s what the process looks like:
The base price for AdvertSuite is $67. This is a one-time payment to get lifetime access to the software. But, that just includes Facebook ads (no other advertising platforms).
When you purchase this front-end offer, you’ll be automatically sent to the first up-sell which is called the “syndication” upgrade. This upgrade also costs $67 one-time and unlocks the Instagram, Google ads and YouTube ads modules in the software.
I think the product is incomplete without this upgrade. Mainly because most advertisers don’t run ads just on Facebook – but also on Instagram.
So I’ve also purchase this upgrade to have the complete product.
Then, when you’ve purchased the upgrade, you’ll be sent to yet another page. This time to offer a $47 success training package that complements the software.
I decided to also add this upgrade to my purchase, which unlocked the VIP training section in the screenshot below. At the moment there are 11 in-depth training videos on using AdvertSuite and applying your findings to advertising campaigns.
Honestly I think training should be an integral part of any software product, to get the most out of it. I don’t feel that training should be an up-sell product – because that essentially limits people that didn’t buy the training to use the product optimally.
But maybe that’s just me…🤔
Anyway, I took this upgrade and I think the training is worth it.
And finally you’ll be sent to the last upgrade offer, the $197 reseller package.
This upgrade offers the ability to create your own custom version of AdvertSuite on your own domain name and with your own logo on it. You can then sell this version of AdvertSuite to other people and basically earn money on AdvertSuite.
The $197 reseller package includes 20 licenses that you can resell to others like an agency (want to learn more about the best digital marketing agencies?)
My (ethical) problem with this is that you resell a very affordable product at a higher price to others, only because they don’t know they can buy it cheaper. To me that doesn’t feel right. Of course this doesn’t apply when a reseller adds additional value.
Needless to say, I haven’t bought this upgrade, but you do you.
AdvertSuite review conclusion
In this in-depth AdvertSuite review I’ve written down almost everything I know about the software. I think it’s an honest review highlighting the features, use-case examples and dissecting the purchase process (so you know the final price upfront).
You should now have the information to make your own decision.
I bought AdvertSuite ($67) + Syndication ($67) and the training ($47) so $181 in total.
My personal conclusion is that AdvertSuite is a really valuable spy tool for anyone who runs ads on Facebook (or Instagram, Google and YouTube) and wants to model what works for others. I’ve been using this software almost on a weekly basis to find inspiration. It’s not the magic bullet that the sales page pitches, but compared to Facebooks Ad Library it’s a much better spy tool. And compared to other ad spy tools in this market it’s extremely cheap and it comes without any ongoing fees!You still need to test your own Facebook ads…